7 Lessons That I Learned at Testim’s Lightning Talks

I got an amazing opportunity to be a part of Testim’s lightning talks webinar and would like to share my learnings for others in the test automation community. Testim is an efficient and helpful automation solution that gives us the speed and stability of codeless tests with the flexibility of code, which takes a load off of our team’s chest at ThoughtExchange and this is just one part of it. I want to share my learnings from test automation experts who joined from not only diverse locations, but also came from diverse backgrounds as well.

I always search for such opportunities where I can meet such experts and learn from them. This webinar was 7 individual sessions over 1 hour, which gave us a lot of info in such a short amount of time with these experts who are sharing their expertise and immense knowledge where everyone is benefited which I always look forward to. Read on for 7 key learnings from each session.

Session 1: Small changes for big wins by Penny Howard

If you are dealing with any stressful situations within the team or dealing with any changes going on around, take a step back and analyze the situation. Ask questions to yourself and the team when applicable.

Are there any unhappy situations within the team or in the organization? Open those discussions and face head on as a team. Change your sprint meetings from weekly to double if needed. She summarizes that if you change nothing, nothing will change. Watch Penny’s lightning talk here.

Session 2: What is TestOps? By Ronit Belson

Things get difficult to manage as we grow as a team or organization. We need the right tools to scale our teams and tests. TestOps is a discipline of managing and scaling test automation to maximize efficiency, delivery speed and application quality.

1. Control

We need to make sure as we grow, we standardize the processes, roles and responsibilities should be clearly mentioned to the team. Encourage them to reuse the component which helps to save time and reduces maintenance. Always encourage the positives in people and work.

2. Management

Organize and name your tests. Distribute the workload within the team. If a company is moving towards continuous testing then it is very important that the team has built trust into create and maintain the tests.

3. Insights

Celebrate achievements and share and show progress with your test automation. Analyze the work and figure out the lessons learned so we do not repeat it. Watch Ronit’s lightning talk here.

Session 3: Internals of a Pristine Pipeline by Manoj Pahuja

Manoj shares objectives for good quality software, starting with reliability. He emphasizes on the point that we need to automate at every step as possible during the process starting from build, test, deploy and monitor. He gave us this key point that if you introduce new tests in the system, do use it multiple times for a few releases. Make sure it is stable and when you get full confidence on it, then push it in the pipeline. This makes a huge difference in the reliability of the product as you can deploy new builds 1000 times more and helps optimize your speed. Watch Manoj’s lightning talk here.

Session 4: Accessibility with Erin Hess

Accessibility and automate evangelist Erin Hess spreads awareness about why our products and services should go through accessibility testing and what are the fundamentals of it. 1 out of 5 people have an accessibility barrier, which makes this population the largest minority in the world. First of all, we care for these people and now it’s a legal compliance to meet these standards as well. She takes this topic even further to not only should we do accessibility testing for our projects but also we can do it automated.

Yes! Accessibility testing can be automated. It improves quality and consistency. I never thought of that. Now I know, and now we know! She also shared tools and resources to get you started with, for e.g., Funkify, Wave, NVDA, axe to name a few. Watch Erin’s lightning talk here.

Session 5: My dad’s banned song by Jenny Bramble

This inspiring session was fun to watch and for us as Jenny started her talk with her dad singing, “Rock me momma, like a wagon wheel….” Her dad says, “Unless your name is Bob Dylan or Ketch Secor, you don’t play it.” Jenny explains the history and culture behind this song which was a refreshing treat for us. She relates this song to the integration testing and how we learn from each other, influences one another. Communication is the cornerstone of our teams. She leaves us with the thought to encourage and influence someone to become a great tester by integrating in and creating a better testing ecosystem. Watch Jenny’s lightning talk here.

Session 6: Creating a test automation strategy by Julia Pottinger

Test automation strategy should be built by the entire team involved, including all the questions answered in it. She starts with the Why. Figure out why you need to automate the tests. Followed by who/ how — who is going to write, maintain tests? Add in the strategy plan about what you are going to automate.

UI based automation is slower and little as compared to the unit based. Prepare the plan for the test environment. It is very important to figure out where we are going to run the tests? Do we need a separate QA environment? Create a mind map which includes automation frameworks, testing types, automation code management to name a few. Watch Julia’s lightning talk here.

Session 7: Test code: Quality reviews by Federico Toledo

If you have been creating automation tests for a long time then now is the time to review them to maintain the quality. Federico explains how to treat your test harness as production code. Make sure that your code is easy to understand by others. Review your test strategy, pipeline, CI/CD strategy frequently to keep it relevant. Federico closes with the importance of hiring and cultivating diverse teams that help to improve your software quality. Watch Federico’s lightning talk here.


I greatly enjoyed this lightning talk webinar, the diverse leaders and topics, and am excited to continue to learn more about TestOps with Testim, as we scale our teams and tests at ThoughtExchange.